Charles Petzold

I want to publicly thank everyone involved in and attending CodeStock 2011, and particularly Michael Neel, for making my trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, such a sheer pleasure earlier this month.

On Day One, I gave a little talk about XNA programming for Windows Phone 7 that was intended as an introduction to XNA for Silverlight programmers, so I showed how you can use XNA to create simple controls, such as a toggle button. I didn't quite finish the sample code I was creating during the session, but here it is, and it should be available on the CodeStock site as well.

That same evening I delivered the keynote address in a terrific venue (the Bijou Theater), and quite contrary to this year's CodeStock theme — Yoda's observation "Always in motion is the future." — I chose to reach back in time and discuss the history, theory, and motivation for an obscure Victorian analog computer. Despite the weirdness of the topic, I received some very encouraging feedback.

On Day Two, David Giard grabbed me for his 160th video interview and here it is:

http://technologyandfriends.com/archive/2011/06/13/tf160.aspx

David and I had a very nice chat about the keynote and related (and unrelated) topics.